Currently, many advertisers or other asset providers place commercials, public service announcements, product placement overlays, or other assets within broadcast programming such as television programs in order to provide their messages to consumers. Though the associated asset delivery opportunities can occur within programming or during breaks in programming, typical asset delivery opportunities include a number of commercial play spots, or ad spots, included in a commercial break. Each program on each ad supported programming channel has certain periods of time or screen/audio clip space, the “asset delivery opportunities,” set aside to sell to asset providers and in which the asset providers place their assets.
Asset providers often desire to have their assets seen by specific types of people within the total audience that have certain audience classification parameters (classifications), for example, dog owners or males 25 to 49 years old. In this regard, the asset provider may specify targeting parameters, corresponding to such classifications, in connection with each asset that define the targeted audience. Such classifications and targeting parameters may be defined in terms of demographics, interests, psychographics, geography, purchasing behavior or any other information of interest to asset providers or potential asset providers. The asset provider typically accesses a contracting platform (or works with agency personnel) to arrange for placement of an asset or set of assets in specified asset delivery opportunities or to purchase a specified number of impressions over a defined time period. The targeting parameters, delivery goals and other constraints or specifications regarding delivery of an asset or assets define a campaign. When an asset is delivered by the user equipment device (e.g., a television/set top box, computer or other data terminal or a wireless device), those users with the correct classifications (the targeted audience) successfully receive an impression of the asset, and the asset may also be delivered to other untargeted members of the program audience. Generally, only successful delivery of an asset to a targeted audience member counts towards satisfying a campaign.
Presently, asset providers select asset delivery opportunities within networks, times, and programs which have measured viewing ratings for classifications such that a relatively large proportion of the audience satisfy the desired targeting parameters. Audience sampling, such as that performed by Nielsen Media Research Corp. (Nielsen), was established to delineate audiences into sectors. For example, the audience sampling may classify audience members into groups based on gender, ethnicity, income level, number of family members, locale, etc.
Audience sampling is often performed via the monitoring of selected households. For example, a monitoring company may provide equipment to a number of households. The member households may comprise a fairly diverse audience with profiles in each household being known to the monitoring company. As such, a monitoring company may monitor the observation patterns of the member households to roughly associate audience profiles with certain content (e.g., television programs). That is, the monitoring company roughly extrapolates the observation patterns of the member households to the audience at large; a process that produces what is generally referred to as ratings.
The case of television advertisements is illustrative. Today, advertisers direct their assets based on ratings. For example, an asset provider may wish to display an ad within a certain programming time slot if the rating for that time slot substantially corresponds to the target audience for the asset (e.g., an asset provider may wish to show a shaving add during a programming time slot having a relatively high rating among males between the ages of 18 and 32). In the best case, however, a significant mismatch of the audience to advertisers' targets still occurs. For example, a programming time slot having a relatively high rating among males between the ages of 18 and 32 may still have a relatively large percentage of female viewers or other viewers that are not of interest to the advertiser.
Audience information may also be obtained via surveys. For example, survey samples may indicate that 15% of television viewers watch a particular channel at 6:00 pm and see a particular news program, and that 35% of these viewers own a dog, which may be higher than average and enough for an asset provider to decide to purchase an asset delivery opportunity in the program to play a dog food ad. It is likely that many audience members of an asset delivery opportunity (in a non-targeted asset delivery system) will still not match any such specific targeting parameters, and delivery of the asset to such audience members may be considered by the asset provider as wasted. As pricing for the asset delivery opportunity is typically based on the targeted audience, delivery to untargeted audience members is also wasted from the perspective of the programming provider and/or network operator.
Targeted asset delivery, as in the Advatar® system marketed by Invidi Technologies Corporation, improves the efficiency of asset delivery by (in one instantiation of the product) sending multiple assets to user devices and programming those user devices to select to deliver one asset from amongst those available that matches (or best matches) the classifications of that user or household, or is otherwise selected for delivery based on delivery criteria or other constraints. Classifications can be assigned to devices, households, or individuals based on data provided by third party demographic databases or other data sources. Additionally or alternatively, device resident classifier systems may continually estimate the likely makeup of the current audience of a particular device. For example, the device might only deliver a shaving ad if a male aged 25 to 49 is likely currently present, or a dog food ad if the device is associated with a dog owning household. This optimizes successful impression delivery and reduces the waste of delivering assets to users who are not in the targeted audience.